North Shore Conference Focuses on Eradicating Birth Defects
Monday August 10, 2009
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Margaret Comerford Freda, RN
After a welcome from Garafalo and White, opening speaker Margaret Comerford Freda, RN, EdD, FAAN, professor and director of patient education programs, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Women’s Health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center, and editor of The American Journal of Maternal Child Nursing, discussed the importance of preconception health in preventing birth defects, particularly in men and women of advanced age.
Joy Henderson, RNC, MSN, CPNP-PC, manager of Regional Perinatal Centers for NewYork-Presbyterian, The University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell, covered techniques to help perinatal nurses assess and care for newborns with congenital anomalies and malformations, and to recognize genetic variations in newborns.
During a panel discussion featuring members of The Down Syndrome Connection, an organization of parents of children with the syndrome, panelists shared their experiences of how they were given the news about their children. Although circumstances were different, the story was the same, they said. They each were disappointed in the way they received the news. One mother had been called on the phone by the doctor, another had been told by the NICU nurse about a half-hour after all the staff had rushed from the delivery room with the baby. The mothers called upon the members in the audience to remember that “nurses are in the unique position to shape that memory.”
Jane Corrarino, RN, MS, a public health nurse with the Suffolk County (N.Y.) Department of Health Service, closed out the conference with a discussion on how to develop effective parent-centered programs.
“When developing a new program for parents, we need to find out what they think is important, not what we think is important,” she said.
Corrarino ended her segment with a quote from John Gardner, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education & Welfare: “Life is filled with golden opportunities, carefully disguised as irresolvable problems.”
Tracey Boyd is a regional reporter. To comment, e-mail editorNY@nursingspectrum.com.
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